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This chapter identifies other factors that bind Americans together, even in an age of so-called “identity politics”, the allegiances that gays, blacks, immigrants, Latinos, and others show to their own kind. It observes that various instances such as embodied in group claims for recognition; battles to transform white, Euro-American-denominated curricula; or the demonizing language of separatist demagogues, have provoked widespread fear that assertions of group identity threaten national unity. The chapter also raises the question as to what does, or could, bind Americans together.

This chapter identifies other factors that bind Americans together, even in an age of so-called “identity politics”, the allegiances that gays, blacks, immigrants, Latinos, and others show to their own kind. It observes that various instances such as embodied in group claims for recognition; battles to transform white, Euro-American-denominated curricula; or the demonizing language of separatist demagogues, have provoked widespread fear that assertions of group identity threaten national unity. The chapter also raises the question as to what does, or could, bind Americans together.